Remarks and Official Statements - 2009
Graduation Ceremony
Remarks by Ambassador Nancy McEldowney
American College of Sofia
May 21, 2009
I am very pleased to join you here on this beautiful campus and to have this opportunity to pay tribute to the graduating class of 2009.
This is a tremendously important day and there are many people who have made today possible, including your visionary President Tom Cangiano, the many excellent teachers here at ACS, and the immensely dedicated board-members of this outstanding institution. And of course today would never have happened without the parents who have poured their strength and wisdom, their patience and endurance, their hearts and their souls into the lives of their children.
But today belongs most especially to the graduates, to those who have worked so hard and so well, and who have accomplished so much. On this day, you step forward and take your place in the world. You also take your place in the long and very distinguished history of the American College of Sofia. Founded almost one hundred and fifty years ago, this superlative school has led generations before you to very same values that you now embody – the values of intellectual excellence, moral integrity, and social responsibility.
These are the values that have propelled past graduates on to great achievements in their lives and they are what you will carry with you for the rest of your life. The continuity of these values and their enduring truth is tremendously important. They lie at the core of the grand historical tradition of the American College of Sofia – a tradition that you are now a part of - and that now is a part of you.
This is a tradition that will serve you well in the years ahead. For you will need the enduring truth and the guiding clarity of this tradition as you face overwhelming change in your life and your world. Think for just a moment about all of the difficult changes that we face:
How will we manage the global economic crisis and the increase in global poverty?
How will we stop health pandemics and combat illiteracy?
How will we replace violence with peace and replace terrorism with tolerance?
How will we eliminate corruption and ensure that true merit is recognized and rewarded?
These are tough problems, to be sure, and they do not have quick or easy solutions. But the degree you receive today and the experiences here at ACS that have shaped you as a person of compassion and commitment have put you on the path toward finding solutions. As you go on to continue your education and to take up positions of leadership in your communities and your countries, you have the chance – if you will take it – to help solve these problems.
A chance, but only if you take it. And that is the key. It is why people often say that you do not have to be great to get started, but you must start in order to be great. You must chose to get involved and you must decide what kind of impact you will try to make.
One of those choices will face many of you very soon, when the Bulgarian national elections are held in just a few weeks on July5. This will likely be the first time in your lives that you are qualified to vote in a national election. I urge you to exercise the enormous power of that vote and to be guided by the ACS values in striving to shape a better future for your country.
You will also face another kind of choice in the next few years. Most of you will leave Bulgaria to attend college in other countries. When you complete your degrees, you’ll then have to decide whether to return, to seek your careers here in Bulgaria, or to remain abroad. It will be a difficult choice, both personally and professionally. As you face that choice, I am confident that what you leaned here about moral integrity and social responsibility will guide you to make the right decision.
As you grapple with all of the changes that lie ahead, I want you to consider a phrase that I first heard long ago the three types of people in the world – those who make things happen, those who watch things happen, and those who wonder what did happen. Don’t be among those who watch and wonder, but instead be those who act. Be among those who shape our world for the better. Take risks and challenge the status quo. And above all, do not accept things as they are but instead make them what you dream they can be.
And no matter how hard things get, no matter how overwhelmed or discouraged you may feel, please always remember the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson, who said “when it is dark enough, you can see the stars.”
My friends, find those stars and reach for them.
Congratulations.